I recently went to HSBC to open a new business account. As part of the process I was asked whether I planned to do any business with Iran or Iraq. Unfortunately I don’t have any exciting business to do with the middle east so my answer was ‘no’. I however had to inquire why I was asked this question and I was kindly explained that, was I to carry out any business with Iran or Iraq, HSBC would withdraw my account and no longer support my business. I subsequently asked why business with these two specific countries were cause of concern for opening an HSBC business account. The advisor told me that it was due to the risk dealing with these countries, with regards to corruption, fraud etc. The advisor didn’t seem much more impressed with his own answer than I did, and when I pointed out that neither Iran or Iraq are anywhere near the top of the list of dodgy countries, that Somalia and Myanmar are the most corrupted countries (http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2008/cpi2008/cpi_2008_table) etc, he shook his shoulders in an agreeing way and made no effort to convince me otherwise.

The reasons behind HSBC’s decision to make a specific exception to dodge-label and alienate Iran and Iraq (only) to the extent that every business account opening client will have to be asked and assure they will not do business with these two countries, seem political rather than to do with risk assessment, or I am missing the logic.

I have many lovely and talented Irani and Iraqi friends. I will have to ask them for heir opinions on the bank’s standpoint. Personally I have a bit of a problem with these, though small, things increasingly sneaking into processes in a veiled way, creating a wider gap between ‘them’ and ‘us’, and a greater fear for those countries and consequently the people from there.

An other little thing that annoyed me recently happened as I was travelling to Ireland with Air Lingus. Hungover and tired at Gatwick airport I ended up behind a group of ‘East London boys’ at boarding and I had to wait as they tried to sort out that two of them had walked through to departures with each other’s boarding passes and hence had the wrong person on the matching picture (you get photographed when you pass through). They made me laugh though, they looked sweet and funny in the pictures, they were joking and laughing, clearly excited to go on a trip to Dublin together.

I got to pass them and the boys didn’t get on the plane until a while later, two of the guys if I remember correctly Hussein and Miah) were subsequently called to contact the staff, they immediately showed up at the front of the plane, were taken aside and never got back on the plane. Their bags were removed resulting in a major delay, and at least five different people from outside consulted with the cabin crew and the captain, including three fully geared policemen.

Curious about the commotion I asked another guy from the youth group at the baggage belt after the flight what had happened. Apparently one of the boys was not let on-board as he didn’t have his visa. The leader of the youth group (www.yescheme), Anam Hoque, explained that they had inquired the airline prior to the trip and been told that visa wasn’t required since he had a permanent UK resident stamp in his passport.

What annoyed me in this case are several small things;

1. I can’t help but thinking this would not happen to me, I’ve even managed to travel from the UK to Sweden without a passport, although clearly required! In this case the airline had done wrong and I am slightly concerned people get treated differently because their name is Graham White, Anna Gudmundson or Mohammad Hussein, which should not be the case!

2. The cabin crew announced and apologised for the delay using expressions such as them being “taken aback by this incident” and by no means indicating any unfortunate mistake or miscommunication by the airline. Not knowing the story, Hussein and Miah could undoubtedly come across as a bit suspect to the other travellers, being called to the plane, not coming back, their luggage retrieved and three equipped policemen showing up.

3. Why on earth were there so many people involved and three fully geared up policemen called in? Again, I don’t see this happening had me and my friends been in the same situation.

Should I let these minor events disturb me? As I mentioned in the HSBC case, it’s the sense of estrangement that bothers me. And for the guy without his visa, his friends Hussein and Miah, what should have been a fun group trip to Dublin ended up in a very disappointing experience and the whole group got to witness the (in my opinion) possibly discriminating, but at least badly handled event. And I don’t like young people to experience that they are treated differently because they’re Pakistani, or Iraqi.

I’m going to keep watching out for and grumble about these small events. I think it’s important. And when many of these add up, I think it’s a threat to society. There you go.

The community is still very much focused on what’s cool and fun, and the requirements are more driven by mobile enthusiasts and geeks than by clients or potential consumer demands. There’s a lot of services developed to be pushed out, hoping that the man or woman on the street will find it cool and fun enough to engage with, and in the best case – pay for it!

I lack input from someone who’s delivered applications or services based on a demand from a consumer group, real client requirements or someone who’s actually spent time investigating what the masses out there (who are not mobile fanatics but have this enabling device in their pocket) would like to use location base services for (or not) and what they would be willing to pay for

The man on the front row from MoMo Toronto (forgot his name) asked the relevant question about viable business models. We can go back to the basic sales process; 1. what is the need that we are fulfilling? I do love innovation and I’m one of the Mobile geeks, but I’m also a business geek and I want to see return. A killer app solves a problem or fills some kind of need. Of course that need can be connecting with friends, Facebook being the obvious example, but Facebook also resolved many problems as well – managing all your private contacts, finding and getting hold of old friends, efficiently set up events, invite people and RSVP, find and create groups for people with the same interest.. And they won the game doing this. As crazy as we are about finding cool ways of using LBS and social media, I will still ask the question what the business model is.

It doesn’t mean that I disagree with Roberta Lucca from Vertu although she expressed that the focus shouldn’t be on the business model but how to provide useful services to the consumers. I do agree with this; that should be question number one. But, before I’d go and invest money and effort in developing the service my second step would be to explore a business model.

It was nice to see some ladies on the stage. It shouldn’t be something that you’d have to comment on, but looking at the audience we’re still a tiny minority in the community. Seeing panels like yesterday is definitely a way to attract more ladies to the sector, rather than the hired ladies in red at the Vodafone 360 launch event (where were the sexy guys in red??) although I had a great time at the event and enjoyed my thorough private demo (I arrived late and missed the official one). I pretty sure it’s thanks to Helen Keegan (http://technokitten.com) we get a nice mix on the stage, and having been to many of her events, that the events flow so well, that there are high number of attendants, they are free (through sponsoring) and very importantly that there’s a nice crowd and good ambiance. I always leave the MoMoLo events having had interesting chats, yesterday especially with Andrew Hardie (http://www.ashardie.com) who raised the still relevant topic around privacies and policies, but I won’t go into that, I always like to get different perspectives though! I look forward to the next event and in the meantime I’m exploring Mobile SEO, if anyone has any useful sources please let me know. Can Mobile SEO generate some money? We’ll see.

If you would allow the lack of water in the river to symbolise the difficult times we are experiencing, it surely doesn’t seem to have cracked the spirit of Chilean visionaries. Sure, the country is feeling the bite just like everywhere else, but the Chilean economy appears to be withstanding the crises better than many old economies, and the crises may well be the catalyst to push through the changes required in structures, culture and old ways of thinking, to take Chile to the next level, and maybe to break through the ‘glass ceiling’…

My purpose in travelling to Chile was to explore a business idea and to attend the Global Summit of Women 2009, the 19th of its kind. The Summit brings women leaders from around the world together, to discuss women’s economic development, leadership and political influence around the globe, to network, exchange experiences and ideas, and to take initiatives towards a more diverse and balanced global order.

With the wide range of topics that the summit covers, and the various breakout sessions to be attended, each participant can walk away with a different experience. Whether you find that the summit paints a bright and positive picture for the future of women across the globe, or if you get a sense of struggle, obstacles and hard work, is more likely dependent on your mindset rather than the program, speakers or delegates. The variety of angles, topics, countries and interests is truly broad.

Having heard an auspicious speech from Her Excellence President Michelle Bachelet Jeria; spoken to Esther Silver Parker, VP Wal-Mart USA, about global trends in the current crises; having heard personal stories from successful women entrepreneurs and how they have overcome their fears of failure; partaken in a workshop on effective leadership and got goose bumps of Nobel Peace Prize winner Jody Williams’ speech on violence against women, I leave the summit humbled by the charismatic, balanced, generous and skilled women leaders that are out there doing an amazing job, be it in a charitable organisation, leading a country, a multinational corporate or supporting micro-businesses somewhere in Africa.

I was particularly keen to explore any indicators of a paradigm shift towards increased diversity in positions of power and influence. A 50 women strong Vietnamese delegation shared their success stories and progress of the women of Vietnam both in business and politics. Vice President Nguyen Thi Doan expressed the need for governments to put policies in place to accelerate such changes and the results they presented show great progress in an important economically emerging part of the world. The mere presence of the first woman minister of Saudi Arabia, Norah Adbullah Al-Faiz, is a symbol in itself as is that of the hosting country’s President Bachelet, the first female president of the country.

It is not, however, an all-sunny picture that I wish to paint. As Esther Silver Parker, Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. USA expressed when I sat down for a ten minute chat with her:

“I do see a positive shift towards women’s empowerment, however, the development is worryingly slow. For leaders in business, the number of women in the pipeline for the top positions is still decimal. Women tend to go for more support type positions and not for destination jobs. With destination jobs I mean jobs that lead to CEO positions.”

Global recessions generally have a positive impact on female employment, particularly in poorer countries. When one salary is no longer enough to feed a family, or the man loses his job, the woman has to step in to fill the income gap. Although this ‘effect of a negative trend’ is more noticeable in poorer parts of the world, it is also a tendency in our economies. In richer countries you can also observe a recession ‘knock-on effect’, where when companies downsize, men on higher levels in the organisation get made redundant as a measure of diminishing costs. This allows women, as well as managers in general across the organisation, to fill in the positions and grasp opportunities. In other words, we can see some positive outcomes of the recession, although I do not want to claim that the recession has an overall positive effect, for either men or women.

So should we thank the crisis for the tendencies of change and the opportunities generated on the back of the turbulence and required restructuring? My own opinion is that the process has already started. We had a woman and a black man nominated as candidates to the US Presidential election long before hell broke loose. I do, however, believe that the crisis may have come as a powerful catalyst. Had the measures been put in place and the actions taken that we see now, we would not have seen the same level of meltdown. The question is, how do we carry the learning forward and ensure that the positive effects of the current shake-up become permanent ways of conducting business in the future?

“En rio revuelto, siempre hay pesca” means that the wise take advantage of turmoil (“in turbulent waters you can always find fish”). I would encourage everyone to consciously think about how to take advantage of this time of turbulence and think not only about what we want with our careers and what opportunities may be available to grab, but also to think about what values, behaviour and culture we want to see in our organisations, and how we can contribute to weave these into the processes and ways of doing business at all levels in the workplace. Let’s not miss the occasion to push through a positive sea change and let’s also make sure we do not miss any career or business opportunities that may now have moved within our reach due to the shakeout.

I am proud of and impressed with the inspiring peers and role model leaders I met at the Global Summit of Women 2009 in Santiago. There is clearly long way to go until we see a 50/50 situation across men and women on the boards, but there are indicators of a positive change and we have a turbulent river that is yet to set its new direction. It is up to all of us to decide and take action to make sure the river runs in the direction we want for the future.

http://thenextwomen.com/2009/09/07/women-leadership-and-economic-turbulence-reflections-from-the-global-summit-of-women-2009/#more-7380